The Great Thief

Skill book, rare materials, quest materials, Gold equipment, Dark Gold equipment…

Epic equipment…

Only one piece!

Under normal circumstances, this was unacceptable. If it was a First Clear, there should have been at least two pieces, and if luck was on their side, maybe even three.

It was clear what this meant.

No one looked particularly happy on the field.

“There were about ten or so who finished the quest. We just don’t know who did it first,” Sky Moon said anxiously. His heart was as fragile as a strand of hair. He had considered the outcome if Ruling Sword didn’t get the First Clear. Although it wouldn’t be absolutely devastating, it wouldn’t exactly be a happy ending.

In competing for the First Clear of a Wild Boss, Ruling Sword was always in a weaker position.

Because Lu Li didn’t want to have a fight between their own allied clubs, they spent a frighteningly large amount of potions in the Wild Boss battle, and they also had to consider the problem of those players who lost their equipment.

In a controlled environment such as an Instance Dungeon, they had an advantage in achieving the First Clear.

Although they had their First Clear stolen by Blood Red War Flag, and they had once let Drizzle Court take it, Ruling Sword was always superior in Instance Dungeon First Clears.

This had kept going until today, when Glory Capital had snatched away a First Clear.

“My bad,” Lu Li apologized straightforwardly, admitting his own carelessness. He had gotten the club’s help in the battle against Eranikus, which was the reason he gave this sort of promise. However, the main thing was that they needed to make some adjustments after insect war.

Ruling Sword’s team had fought in front of the wall for a full 10 hours.

Unless you got a few days rest after, you basically wouldn’t recover properly.

He knew this fact ages ago, so he negotiated a gentleman’s agreement to drag it on a little longer. However, he never knew that the other clubs simply didn’t care about him. This made Lu Li understand deeper the true meaning behind the saying, ‘the market is like a battlefield.’

“From the strength of the smaller monsters, I feel like they’ve killed one or two Bosses at most, so we’re not out of hope,” Wandering said.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have an objective in view. Glory Capital had only finished the opening quest one or two days ago, and they were focused on taking the First Clear of the Ahn’Qiraj Ruins. In order not to let word get out, not many players were sent in.

They were wanting to gain the maximum profit of killing three Bosses, but if the second Boss was really hard, then they would probably be in a bit of a tangle.

“Good. I hope everyone’s awake. Let’s go and finish off this Boss.”

Lu Li wasn’t a person who took to defeat easily, let alone the fact that he had been reborn.

He would let you run ahead 39 meters before showing you his 40 metre-long knife!

After they finished off Skeram, they would truly enter into Ahn’Qiraj. After a few more levels, they turned right and could see the three quest dragons.

If you headed down towards the left you would see one or two Qiraji Brainwashers with a few Vekniss Guardians together. The Qiraji brainwashers were basically the ‘lite’ version of the first Boss. They had

less health and less defense, but they could control people. The tactic was to use two Tanks to pull them, with the Mages Polymorphing the people who had been controlled.

The Vekniss Guardians were a tiny bit more difficult. This sort of monster had no particular tricks, but when their HP got down to 10%, all the guardians would surround the players and cast an AoE Impale. Basically, this meant that you were thrown up high, then left to fall down.

Therefore, when you were tanking these monsters, not only did you have to stay close to the wall, but you also needed to have a barrier above your head. Lu Li used his prior knowledge ‘just happen’ to find out this position.

Otherwise, with all these small monsters surrounding you, it wasn’t too unreasonable to die over a dozen times.

When these monsters were about to die, they would also give off an Arcane Explosion in a self-destructive manner. Apart from the Main Tank, all other players were to stay away from the monster when it was about to die. The key to dealing with the Qiraji brainwashers and the guardians was to first quickly kill off the brainwashers, then kill the guardians one by one.

After facing two groups of these combined forces, they kept going down and came to a group of Vekniss warriors standing together.

Actually, all in all, the smaller monsters in the Ahn’Qiraj Temple were powerful enough make the whole team die, sometimes even more than once.

While they appeared to be easy to defeat, after they died, they would summon a swarm of ‘Vekniss Borers’. These insects weren’t only extremely tiny, but there were about five or six hundred of them for each person to deal with.

They carefully killed off this group one by one, first focusing their attacks on one Vekniss warrior. After dealing with the Borers, they would go and provoke the next Vekniss warrior.

If they provoked three of them at once, the whole team would definitely die.

Between the first and second Boss were basically just the aforementioned monster groups. They kept clearing the monsters until they reached the second Boss.

The second Bosses were relatively special. They were formed a group – a famous stinkbug family.

Afterwards, they were given a nickname – they were called the ‘Lucky 3 Treasures’ by the players. The dad was Lord Kri, the mum was Princess Yauj, so of course, Vem was the son.

“Does everyone need to rest for a bit?”

After receiving a negative answer, Lu Li nodded his head, saying, “Then we’ll do it as before. Let’s test it out first.”

The battle this time took a while – almost half a day.

Lord Kri had two main skills. One was Poison Bolt Volley, which dealt area-of-effect damage. Apart from dealing 500 direct damage, it also did an additional 125 damage every second, which could be stacked on top. The other was a Poisoned Corpse. After Lord Kri died, a poison cloud would remain above his corpse, which dealt 2000 damage every second.

The mother, Princess Yauj, had four skills.

Group Fear: Yauj would cast an AoE Fear at a close range. This Fear had no limit on the number of people it affected. At the same time, regardless of whether you were immune against the Fear, your aggro would decrease down to 0. Because of this, the healers would pray that the Fear wouldn’t be defended against.

Heal: Under normal circumstances, Yauj heal herself, although it was possible that she would sometimes heal her son Vem. Of course, Kick, Shieldstrike and Earthquake were able to disrupt this ability.

Yauj Blood: After the princess died, seven or eight little bugs would appear. They had approximately 17 000 HP, and they had to be quickly dealt with.

Rage: If Vem died before Yauj, then Yauj would enter into a rage.

The last skill was proof that they were one family. It could be considered an expression of a mother’s love.

The son, Vem, only had two skills. One was Knock Away, which frequently knocked away a certain player. The second skill was Charge, but this also altered the target’s aggro.

The first thing was to eliminate the strategy of trying to take on them all at once. It was simply impossible to kill three Bosses all at once. Because of this, they could deduce that the intended way for attacking this Boss was to go according to a certain order.

As such, they needed to find out a certain order that would work.

Actually, the HP of these Bosses wasn’t too high. Lord Kri had about 600,000 HP, Princess Yauj had about 800,000, and Vem, about 1,200,000.

From this perspective, they should kill Lord Kri first, then Princess Yauj, then finally Vem.

Actually, these three Bosses dropped different things. Only the one who was killed last would drop items. Vem dropped the worst items, while Lord Kri dropped the best. Because of this, Lu Li had a real hard time deciding the order of how to kill this family.

Logically, Lord Kri, Princess Yauj then Vem was the easiest, and it was the more standard method. Most clubs followed this order.

However, in terms of getting good drops, this method was the worst.

If they could pull Lord Kri to a corner, there was no way that the Poison Volts could affect the entire room. But with the limits on aggro on everyone in the room, when others had been affected by Fear, the small group of healers resisting Lord Kri would face their first wave of disastrous deaths.

Because of this, Lu Li used Azure Sea Breeze to occupy Lord Kri, two Tanks against Princess Yauj and another two against Vem.

Firstly, they tried to separate Lord Kri from the other two, focusing their damage to kill him as quickly as possible. Lord Kri’s poison skill could be recast at a very high frequency.

As such, the healers were constantly running around, trying to heal everyone as equally as possible.

The defensive roles pulling Vem were basically the same as the ones pulling the princess. Of the two Tanks, one was the main puller and the other was waiting by the healers, waiting for Vem to Charge. As soon as Vem charged, the waiting tank would assume his role.

When Lord Kri was killed, everyone avoided his poison cloud and focused their DPS on killing the princess. At this time, the ranged players would prepare to nuke the insects. At the same time, it was important to cut off the princess’ healing.

After killing the princess, Vem, wouldn’t pose much of a threat. The remaining strategy was similar to dealing with the Lava Surger in the Molten Core, with everyone focus-firing Vem.

There were also two other orders that they could take.

It could be Lord Kri, followed by Vem and Princess Yauj. The first point of difficulty in this order was that in the process of killing Lord Kri, they couldn’t lose too many DPS players, because they had to kill Vem next. Because his mother was still there, he could not be completely encircled, not to mention that he had the highest HP. If they lost too many DPS roles, the team could die when they came to Vem.

The second point of difficulty was in the princess’ berserk. This required more effort from the healing roles to spread around to make sure that more people would stay alive.

The last order was killing Princess Yauj, then Vem, then Lord Kri. This was the most difficult order, but it had the best drops. The difficulty of this order was more than could be imagined, but what was dropped was also unbelievable.

If there wasn’t another club racing ahead of them, Lu Li would probably have chosen the 3rd option.

It was a shame, however, that he had no choice but to take the first order.

This order would make the second Boss only a bit harder than the first Boss. If they chose the third order, then it would probably make this one of the most difficult Instance Dungeons.

The Ahn’Qiraj Instance Dungeon was constructed very grandly.

It was as though there were three different Bosses at this second stage. The strategy and the drops weren’t the same.

With Lu Li here, they could simply choose the easiest option and go ahead with it. The main thing with competing for a First Clear was timing.

There was a real chance they couldn’t get the First Clear otherwise.

The order with the worst drops immediately had the best chances of getting First Clear. At least, then, they would receive an extra piece of Epic equipment. Even if the quality was a little off, it would be made up for by numbers, let alone the fact that there was a certain chance of getting an Enhanced Skill Book.

The second Boss of Ahn’Qiraj had a pretty decent chance of dropping an Enhance Skill Book.

Getting a First Clear would increase these chances as well.

After defeating the three Bosses, they couldn’t rest yet. Everyone was waiting for Remnant Dream to loot the equipment. In the present circumstances, they couldn’t learn about the other teams’ progress. They could only tell from the equipment the second Boss dropped whether they had gotten the First Clear or not.

There were a lot of Strengthening Stones, even more than double the amount from the first Boss.

However, this was certainly not the criteria for judging the loot.

Six Synthetic Gems. The quality of these was still alright; at least it wasn’t so bad that no one wanted them.

Everyone could only continue to wait with expectation, staring at Remnant Dream as she looted the equipment.